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Duality In Macbeth

Decent Essays

In Act one, scene five of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” the audience is introduced to Lady Macbeth, and a much more sinister part of the plot begins to arise. At her castle in Dunsinane, Lady Macbeth reads a letter from her husband detailing the witches’ prophecies and she immediately decides that King Duncan must die. Enclosed in this scene is the importance of the relationship of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth as well as the themes of gender and duality. These themes are an important part of the scene and are vital to the plot of the play.

The relationship between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth plays a very important part in this scene. The audience gets a very clear idea that the two are equals to each other. Especially when Macbeth addresses Lady Macbeth in the letter as his “dearest partner of greatness”. The two of them are equal in ambition and this leads them to coming to the same conclusion of wanting to kill King Duncan. However, when Lady Macbeth begins her …show more content…

This scene plays a lot with the theme of gender and how certain traits seem out of place with the characters. Macbeth is war hero and seemingly tough and ambitious but his weakness is that he is far too kind as Lady Macbeth says, he say “too full of the milk of human kindness”. This comes across as a feminine trait in contrast to his ambition. Lady Macbeth is a very complicated character and possesses many Masculine qualities. In her soliloquy she asks spirits to “unsex her” because she wants to kill King Duncan. She asks to be made cruel, strong and free of remorse. Her ambition is her defining feature, which is a typically masculine quality, yet she is more ambitious than Macbeth himself. Neither Lady Macbeth nor Macbeth fit the gender roles that society has placed on them, and from this scene the audience gets the idea that the plot and characters of Macbeth are not as simple as they

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